The broad, long-term objective of this proposal is to improve treatments for patients suffering from neurological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, type I diabetes, and cancer by strengthening the linkage between pre-clinical and clinical studies. Investigators at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine propose to purchase a 7T horizontal 30 cm bore magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner system to image small animals. The diseases to be studied in this proposal represent major public health problems and the requested 7T magnet will provide high resolution imaging of organs involved in target diseases (e.g. prostate, colon, brain, heart, pancreas). This imaging will a) help quantify disease progression in animal models of Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and cancer; and b) determine response to novel therapies for these diseases (e.g. Genistein, small molecule protein kinase inhibitors, T-cell modulation, islet cell transplantation, myocardial progenitor cells). The availability of a 7T MRI system will support current funded studies of mechanisms of these diseases and enable linkage of outcome measures in these animal models with outcome measures used in clinical practice. The requested new system will provide improved signal to noise ratio, resulting in shorter scan times and improved spatial resolution, compared to existing smaller field clinical MRI already present at this institution. Major users of the requested instrument will include highly accomplished scientists who specialize in neurological diseases, cardiovascular disease, islet cell transplantation, and oncology. A comprehensive technical, scientific, and administrative plan is proposed to govern usage of this instrument at the institution. Because of similar operating systems, studies performed on this small animal scanner can potentially be translated to existing clinical scanners already present at the Medical School. [unreadable] PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: research performed on this requested equipment is to eludicate the mechanisms underlying neurological diseases, cardiovascular disease, Type I diabetes, and cancer and to test potential therapies. The long-term goal of initially performing such research in small animals is to translate potential therapies that are developed into future clinical use. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]